|
Jack2142 posted:So the between the lines, unlike later noble families too did Pre-Christian Romans just not really mention the kids who died in childbirth or in infancy? They don't seem to mention it much, there's a lot of debate about this but some evidence that children weren't really considered children until the family decided whether the infant was worth raising or not. Remember Romans are one of the civilizations where any sort of deformity was often dealt with by tossing the baby into the local landfill. But once you're past that and it's a kid being raised, yes the Romans behaved like any other parents and there are tons of monuments put up by intensely grieving parents for very young children, like toddler age. The empire gets significantly hosed up for the sole reason that Marcus Aurelius loved his son and couldn't bear to have him killed to instead pick a worthy successor. We have this idea that people in the past must have been harder hearted because so many of their children would die, but there isn't any evidence for it that I've ever found. Entirely the opposite. It just fuckin' sucked.
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 14:39
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:43 |
|
|
Unless of course they were other people's children.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 14:51
|
|
|
There is a bit in Theophrastus' characters, where one of the characters, "The complainer", seems to consider sons a great expense. quote:When they bring him the good news that he has a son born to him,'' then [he'll say] ' If you add that I have lost half myfortune, you'll speak the truth.' There's also a comedy by Aristophanes, The Clouds, where an old man is saddled with debt because of his son's expensive habit of horse racing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 14:58
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Unless of course they were other people's children. Well, humanity.txt They do seem to have been ruthless enough about unwanted infants that there are references to trash pits as being a good place to pick up free slaves.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:00
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Well, humanity.txt Yeah, this is the kind of thing that makes me wonder. I know the Byzantines didn't do Turkey any good. *edit* In the long run.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:08
|
|
|
The context is important. Infanticide was quite normal among all the classical world cultures, there was nothing especially Roman about it. The Romans are more progressive and what we would consider moral than many of their neighbors. Slavery was very much a flexible position, not a life sentence. Women, as mistreated as they were, had a lot more freedom and rights than they did in a place like Athens. There's a robust philosophical tradition questioning everything, which we don't see in a lot of places (though this could entirely be the difference in documentation). Roman society is significantly more open, social mobility is hard but exists, the Romans were highly multiethnic and don't seem to have had any problem with who you were once you crossed the line into being a Roman citizen. They were the first civilization to introduce any kind of social welfare systems, even before the massive expansion of that during the Christian era. Their system of rule of law at least made an attempt at fairness, which again, for the time was remarkable. I'm not saying they were great people, this is a civilization that holds up war as the highest possible virtue. But if you judge them exclusively against the other civilizations of the time, they are no worse and often much more decent. I honestly can't think of anything where the Romans were known to be significantly more immoral/brutal/whatever than the way other contemporary cultures behaved.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:31
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:The empire gets significantly hosed up for the sole reason that Marcus Aurelius loved his son and couldn't bear to have him killed to instead pick a worthy successor. We have this idea that people in the past must have been harder hearted because so many of their children would die, but there isn't any evidence for it that I've ever found. Entirely the opposite. It just fuckin' sucked. Yeah, I mean Aurelius also managed too see I think 11-12 of his kids die before him mostly due to the plagues? So I imagine an inverse his one son who survived to be a full adult was probably exponentially more precious to him.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:38
|
|
|
Commodus was the only son who outlived him, yeah. It's hard to come down on the guy, even though he was fully aware Commodus would be a terrible emperor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:43
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:The context is important. Infanticide was quite normal among all the classical world cultures, there was nothing especially Roman about it. The Romans are more progressive and what we would consider moral than many of their neighbors. Slavery was very much a flexible position, not a life sentence. Women, as mistreated as they were, had a lot more freedom and rights than they did in a place like Athens. There's a robust philosophical tradition questioning everything, which we don't see in a lot of places (though this could entirely be the difference in documentation). Roman society is significantly more open, social mobility is hard but exists, the Romans were highly multiethnic and don't seem to have had any problem with who you were once you crossed the line into being a Roman citizen. They were the first civilization to introduce any kind of social welfare systems, even before the massive expansion of that during the Christian era. Their system of rule of law at least made an attempt at fairness, which again, for the time was remarkable. My point was that uninterrupted empire would have enabled the calcification of those values, relatively progressive as they might have been, instead of the flux that resulted.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:43
|
|
|
I just read an offhand reference to the apparently not common but not unheard of practice of citizens of a region suing the governor for corruption once he was out of office. Any truth to that?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:46
|
|
|
How much did the plagues contribute to Rome falling apart?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:46
|
|
|
Benagain posted:I just read an offhand reference to the apparently not common but not unheard of practice of citizens of a region suing the governor for corruption once he was out of office. Any truth to that? My understanding was that everyone sued everyone and the only defense was staying in office of some sort or another.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:48
|
|
|
Stringent posted:My point was that uninterrupted empire would have enabled the calcification of those values, relatively progressive as they might have been, instead of the flux that resulted. Would that be a bad thing, though? Also you mentioned China but values weren't that calcified over there, it's just that most records only tell you what the upper class thought. A lot of Chinese writings were prescriptive, too, instead of describing how things truly were. Edit: Chinese dynasties were also not that stable. It just looks that way in hindsight, especially with the tendency to see "China" as a monolithic entity because it's a nation-state now. Kassad fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Dec 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:49
|
|
|
Stringent posted:My point was that uninterrupted empire would have enabled the calcification of those values, relatively progressive as they might have been, instead of the flux that resulted. Ah. I suppose it could've gone that way, but Roman values did evolve a lot with time. There's a stereotype about them being uber-conservative but I don't really buy it. They do cling onto the appearance of it, like throwing festivals so ancient that literally no one remembers why they do it anymore, but their values evolve quite a bit over the span of their history. It's a counterfactual though so who knows. You could be right and there'd be public crucifixions happening in Romania today. That would suck. It makes me think about how much of the Enlightenment revolved around ideas taken from Greek and Roman philosophy. The context was different since the Romans had been gone for centuries, but I could also see that happening earlier without having such a disruption in the west. The eastern empire isn't a great example since it spent so much of its time under siege, the empire remaining a hegemon powerful enough to survive to the modern era would've been a totally different animal.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:50
|
|
|
Stringent posted:My understanding was that everyone sued everyone and the only defense was staying in office of some sort or another. Pretty much. When you held office you were immune to lawsuits and once that protection went away, it was not at all unusual to be swarmed with lawyers. To some extent the entire reason Julius Caesar takes over the empire is because he would be sued to death the moment he gave up his imperium and its associated immunities.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:51
|
|
|
Stringent posted:I dunno man, I look at China and think maybe that breakdown had to not only happen but continue for something different to take its place, but I might be being naive. Losing the historical records straight up sucks though. If you think that a breakup of China would be good for anyone except in the most narrow sense of it strategically benefitting China's regional adversaries, then yes you're being pretty naive. The breakup itself would be intensely violent and kill millions as people fought over everything from state assets to the final borders. All of the smaller states that resulted would have tons of reasons to try to pick off their neighbors or expand at their expense, which would lead to basically a new Warring States period. Without the Chinese economy international trade would get really hosed, leading to bad economic problems across the world. I mean, poo poo, for a best case scenario where China isn't an integral part of the world economy look at the scale of the human suffering that took place following the collapse of the Qing dynasty. The opportunistic invasion by Japan was very much part and parcel of all that. Would some people benefit? Yes. A ton of ethnic minorities would stop having their cultures hosed with. I'm sure tons of Uyghurs and Tibetans would applaud it. That's more of a silver lining than anything else, and even that is going to have a huge disruptive impact as ethnic and cultural groups try to sort themselves in a new post-China landscape. The partition of India is a pretty good modern example of just how ugly this can get. China has a ton of problems and god knows the Chinese government does some hosed up poo poo, but the answer to that is to reform it - even if reform means throwing out the entire government and starting new - not trying to break it up into numerous smaller states.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:54
|
|
|
bewbies posted:How much did the plagues contribute to Rome falling apart? Huge. The eastern empire under Justinian was well on its way through a reconquest of the west when the Plague of Justinian hit and killed everybody, leaving the empire vastly understrength for generations. And then before it could recover, they had an apocalyptic and ultimately useless war with Persia and immediately thereafter the Islamic conquests. Had there been no plague it's entirely possible Rome would've had the strength to defeat both and hold onto the empire. Once they got cut apart and left with little more than Turkey, Greece, and scattered holdings around Italy their days were numbered. A very large number as it turned out, but they were never a world power again.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:55
|
|
|
Kassad posted:Also you mentioned China but values weren't that calcified over there, it's just that most records only tell you what the upper class thought. Is that true though? Yeah the political structures were unstable, but Confucianism is still totally a thing.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:55
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:The breakup itself would be intensely violent and kill millions as people fought over everything from state assets to the final borders. Didn't that literally happen at every dynastic turnover?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 15:58
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Didn't that literally happen at every dynastic turnover? Power struggles? Sure. Even wars? Sure. But not on that kind of scale. The Warring States period is considered to be a gold plated clusterfuck precisely because of how everything fragmented for a good long while.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:03
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Ah. I suppose it could've gone that way, but Roman values did evolve a lot with time. Am I wrong in thinking that they became a lot more racist/xenophobic in Italy at least during the late Empire?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:07
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Am I wrong in thinking that they became a lot more racist/xenophobic in Italy at least during the late Empire? They do, that's one of the reasons they have so much trouble. They don't incorporate the Germanic tribes the way they had everyone else before. Nobody's entirely sure why they turn into a bunch of assholes, some think it's not a coincidence that happens the same time Christianity becomes dominant. I don't know enough about early Christianity to say if it had the same kind of tribalist exclusivity it often does nowadays. I'm sure it didn't help, going from a religion totally cool with incorporation of foreign gods wholesale to one that did not and was already riven with heresy/doctrinal dispute poo poo. But I doubt it was as simple as that. E: Gibbon probably blames it all on the Jebus though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:11
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Is that true though? Yeah the political structures were unstable, but Confucianism is still totally a thing. I'm not sure, that's the thing. But unstable political structures really seems like Confucianism would be ignored a lot in practice, even as it was praised officially.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:16
|
|
|
Kassad posted:I'm not sure, that's the thing. But unstable political structures really seems like Confucianism would be ignored a lot in practice, even as it was praised officially. Well someone came up with this great thing we call Neo-Confucianism which is basically all the lovely parts of Confucius with a healthy dose of "gently caress you" thrown in. The ruler should be respected by his subjects because he is such a good ruler that he benefits everyone and is worthy of respect? poo poo that's a lot of words let's cut that down. "Subjects must respect the ruler." Much better. China also has Legalism, which is frankly more relevant to how the state functions and is pretty much authoritarianism.txt
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:19
|
|
|
Kassad posted:I'm not sure, that's the thing. But unstable political structures really seems like Confucianism would be ignored a lot in practice, even as it was praised officially. It should also be noted that Confucianism doesn't have a monopoly on Chinese philosophy and that it comes out of the Warring States period specifically as a response to the chaos and suffering. Hell, three of the big chinese schools of philosophy do. Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism are all responses to the warring states period that take profoundly different approaches to the question of "how do we solve this."
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:20
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Well someone came up with this great thing we call Neo-Confucianism which is basically all the lovely parts of Confucius with a healthy dose of "gently caress you" thrown in. The ruler should be respected by his subjects because he is such a good ruler that he benefits everyone and is worthy of respect? poo poo that's a lot of words let's cut that down. "Subjects must respect the ruler." Much better. I've always wondered- what's the relationship between neo-confuciansim and legalism? It's always sounded to me like confucianism with the blatantly authoritarian aspects of legalism grafted onti it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:21
|
|
|
Cyrano4747 posted:I've always wondered- what's the relationship between neo-confuciansim and legalism? It's always sounded to me like confucianism with the blatantly authoritarian aspects of legalism grafted onti it. I dunno enough to have a smart opinion. If you read any Joseon history you get a good understanding of Neo-Confucians, Korea got real big into that and it's mostly why Joseon was so hosed up.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:23
|
|
|
How much is the survival of a recognisable Chinese empire due to the decentralization of their belief system versus the centralization of the Pope's authority in Rome?
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:29
|
|
|
Stringent posted:Am I wrong in thinking that they became a lot more racist/xenophobic in Italy at least during the late Empire? Yes and no. The empire generally became less united in a cultural sense from the crisis of the third century on, and this manifested both in suspicion that other Romans were not really as Roman as them, and in distaste for outsiders which was nothing new but became louder as lines between outsider and Roman blurred. It’s hard to call it racism since they didn’t really have modern concept of race, there was certainly sense of inferior barbarian scum but that had always been there. Christianity may not have helped but it’s important to remember that most of the “barbarian invaders” were themselves Christians by the late empire, albeit schismatic. There was also strong political subtext to this cultural fragmentation at least in the west as the imperial seat of power and patronage moved from Italy to Gaul and back to Italy again, with the aristocracies of each region indulging in snobbery at the others expense. Imo it’s not as simple as them turning into a bunch of assholes or failing to incorporate barbarians into the imperial system, well into the empire’s decline you still have totally successful barbarian Roman leaders like Stilicho or Aetius (Aetius, for all his press as “last of the Romans” was a second generation Romanized “Scythian” who obtained political relevance by leading a Hunnic army), it’s more like a crisis of confidence in the concept of Being A Roman which ultimately led people all over the western empire to decide you know what gently caress it, this isn’t worth the trouble. I probably didn’t do a good job of explaining what I mean here but read Guy Halsall’s Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, it does a good job of analyzing whatever cultural chaos was going on in late imperial period that gets dismissed in the popular mind as “THE BARBARIANS ARE INVADING!!!”
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:32
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Huge. The eastern empire under Justinian was well on its way through a reconquest of the west when the Plague of Justinian hit and killed everybody, leaving the empire vastly understrength for generations. And then before it could recover, they had an apocalyptic and ultimately useless war with Persia and immediately thereafter the Islamic conquests. Had there been no plague it's entirely possible Rome would've had the strength to defeat both and hold onto the empire. Once they got cut apart and left with little more than Turkey, Greece, and scattered holdings around Italy their days were numbered. A very large number as it turned out, but they were never a world power again. I think the Byzantine History Podcast does a great job portraying this, you go from Justinian's "Golden Age" with a million people living in Constantinople and then twenty years later half the city is abandoned. So many people died Maurice had an army about a third the size of Justinians and he couldn't afford to pay them... and kept trying to cut costs with obvious results (This results in the stupid Persian Hellwar). Even worse the plague seems to show up every 30-40 years for a couple centuries until the mid-late 800's so even if the Empire wasn't losing territory to the Arabs its population kept shrinking. Grand Fromage posted:Commodus was the only son who outlived him, yeah. It's hard to come down on the guy, even though he was fully aware Commodus would be a terrible emperor. I think he also hoped he would be like Lucius Verus, who liked to screw around with loose women, drinking and chariot races etc. but was actually somewhat competent and maybe hoped that he would at least not go off the deep end completely. Or maybe listen to the advisers Marcus left for him instead of bringing in his drinking buddies. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Dec 14, 2017 |
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:37
|
|
|
Benagain posted:I just read an offhand reference to the apparently not common but not unheard of practice of citizens of a region suing the governor for corruption once he was out of office. Any truth to that? Stringent posted:My understanding was that everyone sued everyone and the only defense was staying in office of some sort or another. According to the Storm Before the Storm (Mike Duncan's recent book), the corruption trials always happened but, because the juries for the Extortion Court were only drawn from the senatorial ranks, they never found anyone guilty (at least until Gaius Gracchus's reform of those juries).
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:41
|
|
|
People often underestimate how often the Romans are victorious simply because they have such incredible manpower reserves compared to their foes. Their policy of incorporating conquered peoples quickly snowballs and by the time they control Italy they have more men available for military service than anyone else could ever hope to field. They had great commanders and training and engineering and all but they were also the Zerg of the classical world. That annoying crap when cheating Total War AI keeps making GBS threads out full stack armies endlessly at you? That's basically how Rome actually worked.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:43
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:People often underestimate how often the Romans are victorious simply because they have such incredible manpower reserves compared to their foes. Their policy of incorporating conquered peoples quickly snowballs and by the time they control Italy they have more men available for military service than anyone else could ever hope to field. They had great commanders and training and engineering and all but they were also the Zerg of the classical world. Highlighted by when the Seleucid's show up in Greece as the "Big Kids" on the block to put the Romans in their place after the Carthaginian War and they just get utterly humiliated.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:47
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:Well someone came up with this great thing we call Neo-Confucianism which is basically all the lovely parts of Confucius with a healthy dose of "gently caress you" thrown in. The ruler should be respected by his subjects because he is such a good ruler that he benefits everyone and is worthy of respect? poo poo that's a lot of words let's cut that down. "Subjects must respect the ruler." Much better.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:49
|
|
|
The period of neo Confucian ascendancy wss also the time when foot binding became patriotic and high class.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 16:58
|
|
|
Stringent posted:How much is the survival of a recognisable Chinese empire due to the decentralization of their belief system versus the centralization of the Pope's authority in Rome? The "survival of the Chinese empire" is propaganda from current states claiming legitimacy by linking themselves to the past regardless of how tenuous those links are. Like, most people wouldn't consider Charlemagne to be Roman but he sure as hell called himself the Holy Roman Emperor cause he was powerful and ruled a big chunk of territory some of which used to be Roman. That's about the strength of the links between most Chinese 'dynasties.'
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 17:39
|
|
|
I've been having some real doubts about the cultural unity of the Roman empire lately. Sure, the outlying provinces got a lot of Roman influence, but it seems like there's a real lack of the people on one side of the empire caring about the other side. After the republic ended, it seems like it was no longer necessary to sustain some kind of public spirit of the empire, and problems in outlying provinces didn't need to be routed through the public of the city of Rome, it's the emperor's problem, and he can just leave the city to go deal with it. I mean a few centuries after the fall of the republic, you have the whole empire being split up because it's easier to manage that way, which certainly seems like there not being much effort on the part of the populous to keep looking towards any real central point rather than just being concerned with their own locality while the emperor(s) jog up and down the empire keeping everything in line. Later as the left half crumbles, there's not much the right half can do about it, and as both halves lost territory, I'm not sure if there was concern amongst the people for the grand whole beyond the damage being done to their specific localities. The process of the empire falling apart was horrible and violent, but right before it happened, the only thing keeping it "together" was a big strong man beating up potential threats, and once that couldn't be done anymore, it was a dead man walking, and there's not much difference between one strong man and the next. I'm not a fan of applying moral judgements to most history, but while it was a crapshoot between bad and worse for roman citizens, it sure seems like a sweet deal if you're a german, and it's not like roman conquest back in the day was all hugs and kisses for the conquered either.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 18:47
|
|
|
Stringent posted:The more I learn about the Roman social system the more I'm amazed the empire lasted as long as it did and the more I question whether it going away was in fact a bad thing. My general conception of Rome is that it's a civilization built around a cult of being really good at fighting stuff and an empire sustained largely by perpetual conquest over many centuries which fell to bits when it stopped being able to conquer things either due to hitting the ocean, the desert, or the arctic. And all the other stuff just happened along the way. Probably not at all accurate but yeah it gives the same general impression after the fact, how did it not happen sooner and why are we sad about it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 18:51
|
|
|
Rome's best century was right after it stopped conquering stuff
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 18:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 23:43 |
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:Rome's best century was right after it stopped conquering stuff "And when
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2017 19:27
|
|
